O filaments of amber, two-faced
iridescence
!
Ezra-Pound-Lustra
.
101
The Three Poets
66
The Game of Chess . . . ProvinciaDeserta . . .
CATHAY
Song of the Bowmen of
68 69
. . . . . . .
63 The City of Choan.
64 South Folk in Cold
95
Shu 75 The Beautiful Toilet. . TheBiverSong . . . The Biver Merchant's
112
To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers . . . 117
Homage to Quintus Septi-
Wife: ALetter . . 81 The Jewel Stairs'
Grievance . . . . Poem by the Bridge at
83
mius Florentis
tianus
Fish and the Shadow
Chris -
121 , 123
Ten-Shin 84
. .
66
.
CONTENTS
65 Country 96
. . . . Villanelle : The Psychologi-
103
NearPerigord
cal Hour
77 Dans un Omnibus de
78 Londres 115
.
88
? LUSTRA OF EZRA POUND
Tenzone
WILL people accept them ? (i. e. these songs).
As a timorous wench from a centaur (or a centurion),
Already they flee, howling in terror.
Will they be touched with the verisimilitudes ?
Their virgin stupidity is untemptable,
I beg you, my friendly critics,
Do not set about to procure me an audience.
I mate with my free kind upon the crags ; the hidden recesses
Have heard the echo of my heels, in the cool light,
in the darkness.
9
? The Condolence
A mis soledades voy>
De mis soledades vengo, Porque por andar conmigo Mi bastan mis pensamientos.
Lope de Vega. O MY fellow sufferers, songs of my youth,
A lot of asses because praise you
are " !
you We are " Red Bloods "
virile,"
We, you, I !
Imagine it, my fellow sufferers
Our maleness lifts us out of the ruck,
Who'd have foreseen it ?
O my fellow sufferers, we went out under the
trees,
We were in especial bored with male stupidity.
We went forth gathering delicate thoughts,
Our " " to serve us. fantastikon delighted
We were not exasperated with women, for the female is ductile.
And now you hear what is said to us : We are compared to that sort of person Who wanders about announcing his sex As if he had just discovered it.
Let us leave this matter, my songs,
and return to that which concerns us.
10
? The Garret
COME let us pity those who are better off than we are.
Come, my friend, and remember
that the rich have butlers and no friends,
And we have friends and no butlers.
Come let us pity the married and the unmarried.
Dawn enters with little feet
like a gilded Pavlova, And T am near my desire.
Nor has life in it aught better Than this hour of clear coolness,
the hour of waking together.
11
? The Garden
En robe de parade. Sainain.
LIKE a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anaemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the
very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like someone to speak to her, And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
12
? Ortus
How have I laboured ? How have I not laboured
To bring her soul to birth,
To give these elements a name and a centre !
She is beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid.
She has no name, and no place.
How have I laboured to bring her soul into
separation ;
To give her a name and her being !
Surely you are bound and entwined,
You are mingled with the elements unborn ; I have loved a stream and a shadow.
I beseech you enter your life.
I beseech
you
learn to " I " say
When I question you :
For you are no part, but a whole ;
No portion, but a being.
13
? Salutation
GENERATION of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable, 1 have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families, I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are, And they were happier than I am ; And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.
14
? Salutation the Second
You were praised, my books,
because I had just come from the country ;
I was twenty years behind the times so you found an audience ready.
I do not disown you,
do not you disown your progeny.
Here they stand without quaint devices,
Here they are with nothing archaic about them.
Watch the reporters spit,
Watch the anger of the professors, Watch how the pretty ladies revile them :
" Is
" the nonsense
this," they say,
that we expect of poets ?
"
"" Where is the vertigo of emotion ?
" No ! his first work was the best. "
" Poor Dear ! he has lost his illusions. "
15
"" Where is the Picturesque ?
? SALUTATION THE SECOND
Go, little naked and impudent songs, Go with a light foot !
(Or with two light feet, if it please you ! )
Go and dance shamelessly !
Go with an impertinent frolic !
Greet the grave and the stodgy,
Salute them with your thumbs at your noses.
Here are your bells and confetti.
Go ! rejuvenate things !
Rejuvenate even " The Spectator. " Go ! and make cat calls !
Dance and make people blush, Dance the dance of the phallus
and tell anecdotes of Cybele !
Speak of the indecorous conduct of the Gods !
(Tell it to Mr. Strachey. )
Ruffle the skirts of prudes,
speak of their knees and ankles.
But, above all, go to practical people go ! jangle their door-bells !
Say that you do no work
and that you will live forever.
16
? The Spring
CYDONIAN spring with her attendant train,
Maelids and water-girls,
Stepping beneath a boisterous wind from Thrace,
Throughout this sylvan place
Spreads the bright tips, And every vine-stock is
Clad in new brilliancies.
Falls like black lightning.
O bewildered heart,
Though every branch have back what last year
lost,
She, who moved here amid the cyclamen,
Moves only now a clinging tenuous ghost.
17
And wild desire
? Albatre
THIS lady in the white bath-robe which she calls
a peignoir
Is, for the time being, the mistress of my friend,
And the delicate white feet of her little white
dog
Are not more delicate than she is,
Nor would Gautier himself have despised their contrasts in whiteness
As she sits in the great chair Between the two indolent candles.
Causa
I JOIN these words for four people, Some others may overhear them,
O world, I am sorry for you,
You do not know these four people.
18
? Commission
Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied, Go also to the nerve-wracked, go to the enslaved-
by-convention,
Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors. Go as a great wave of cool water,
Bear my contempt of oppressors.
Speak against unconscious oppression,
Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.
Go to the bourgeoise who is dying of her ennuis, Go to the women in suburbs.
Go to the hideously wedded,
Go to them whose failure is concealed,
Go to the unluckily mated, Go to the bought wife,
Go to the woman entailed.
Go to those who have delicate lust,
Go to those whose delicate desires are thwarted.
19 c2
? COMMISSION
Go like a blight upon the dulness of the world ;
Go with your edge against this,
Strengthen the subtle cords,
Bring confidence upon the algae and the tentacles
of the soul.
Go in a friendly manner,
Go with an open speech.
Be eager to find new evils and new good,
Be against all forms of oppression.
Go to those who are thickened with middle age,
To those who have lost their interest.
Go to the adolescent who are smothered in
family
Oh how hideous it is
To see three generations of one house gathered
together !
It is like an old tree with shoots,
And with some branches rotted and falling.
Go out and defy opinion,
Go against this vegetable bondage of the blood. Be against all sorts of mortmain.
20
? A Pact
I MAKE a pact with you, Walt Whitman
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father ;
I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root
Let there be commerce between us.
21
? Surgit Fama
THERE is a truce among the gods, Kore is seen in the North
Skirting the blue-gray sea In gilded and russet mantle.
The corn has again its mother and she, Leuconoe, That failed never women,
Fails not the earth now.
The tricksome Hermes is here ; He moves behind me
Eager to catch my words,
Eager to spread them with rumour ;
To set upon them his change
Crafty and subtle ;
To alter them to his purpose ;
But do thou speak true, even to the letter :
" Once more in Delos, once more is the altar
a-quiver.
Once more is the chant heard.
Once more are the never abandoned gardens Full of gossip and old tales. "
22
? Preference
IT is true that you say the gods are more use to
you than fairies,
But for all that I have seen you
on a high, white, noble horse, Like some strange queen in a story.
It is odd that you should be covered with long robes
and trailing tendrils and flowers ;
It is odd that you should be changing your face
and resembling some other woman to
plague me ;
It is odd that you should be hiding yourself
In the cloud of beautiful women who do not concern me.
And I, who follow every seed-leaf upon the wind ? You will say that I deserve this.
23
? Dance Figure
For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee
DARK eyed,
woman of my dreams,
Ivory sandaled,
There is none like thee among the dancers, None with swift feet.
1 have not found thee in the tents,
In the broken darkness.
I have not found thee at the well-head
Among the women with pitchers.
Thine arms are as a young sapling under the
bark;
Thy face as a river with lights.
White as an almond are thy shoulders ; As new almonds stripped from the husk.
They guard thee not with eunuchs ; Not with bars of copper.
24
? DANCE FIGURE
Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest.
A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in patterns,
hast thou gathered about thee, O Nathat-Ikanaie, " Tree-at-the-river. "
As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me;
Thy fingers a frosted stream.
Thy maidens are white like pebbles ; Their music about thee !
There is none like thee among the dancers ; None with swift feet.
25
? April
Nympharum membra disjecta.
THREE spirits came to me And drew me apart
To where the olive boughs
Lay stripped upon the ground : Pale carnage beneath bright mist.
Gentildonna
SHE passed and left no quiver in the veins, who now
Moving among the trees, and clinging
in the air she severed,
Fanning the grass she walked on then, endures : Grey olive leaves beneath a rain-cold sky.
26
? The Rest
HELPLESS few in my country, remnant enslaved !
Artists broken against her, A-stray, lost in the villages, Mistrusted, spoken-against,
Lovers of beauty, starved, Thwarted with systems,
Helpless against the control ;
You who can not wear yourselves out By persisting to successes,
You who can only speak,
Who can not steel yourselves into reiteration ;
You of the finer sense,
Broken against false knowledge, You who can know at first hand,
Hated, shut in, mistrusted :
Take thought :
1 have weathered the storm,
I have beaten out my exile.
27
? Les Millwin
THE little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet. The mauve and greenish souls of the little
Millwins
Were seen lying along the upper seats Like so many unused boas.
The turbulent and undisciplined host of art students
The rigorous deputation from " Slade " Was before them.
With arms exalted, with fore-arms
Crossed in great futuristic X's, the art students
Exulted, they beheld the splendours of Cleopatra.
And the little Millwins beheld these things ;
With their large and anaemic eyes they looked
out upon this configuration.
Let us therefore mention the fact, For it seems to us worthy of record.
28
? Further Instructions
COME, my songs, let us express our baser passions, Let us express our envy of the man with a steady
job
and no worry about the future.
You are very idle, my songs.
I fear you will come to a bad end.
You stand about in the streets,
You loiter at the corners and bus-stops You do next to nothing at all.
You do not even express our inner nobilities, You will come to a very bad end.
And I?
I have gone half cracked,
I have talked to you so much that
I almost see you about me, Insolent little beasts, shameless, devoid of
clothing !
But you, newest song of the lot,
You are not old enough to have done much
mischief,
I will get you a green coat out of China
With dragons worked upon it,
I will get you the scarlet silk trousers
From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa
Maria Novella,
Lest they say we are lacking in taste, Or that there is no caste in this family.
29
? A Song of the Degrees
REST me with Chinese colours, For I think the glass is evil.
II
The wind moves above the wheat With a silver crashing,
A thin war of metal.
I have known the golden disc,
I have seen it melting above me.
I have known the stone-bright place, The hall of clear colours.
Ill
O glass subtly evil, confusion of colours !
O light bound and bent in, soul of the captive, WhyamIwarned? WhyamIsentaway? Why is your glitter full of curious mistrust ?
O glass subtle and cunning, O powdery gold !
O filaments of amber, two-faced iridescence !
30
? Ite
Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young and from the intolerant,
Move among the lovers of perfection alone. Seek ever to stand in the hard Sophoclean light And take your wounds from it gladly.
Dum Capitolium ScanJet
How many will come after me
singing as well as I sing, none better ;
Telling the heart of their truth
as I have taught them to tell it ;
Fruit of my seed,
my unnameable children.
Know then that I loved you from afore-time, Clear speakers, naked in the sun, untrammelled,
To KaXoV
EVEN in my dreams you have denied yourself to me
And sent me only your handmaids. 31
? The Study in Aesthetics
THE very small children in patched clothing, Being smitten with an unusual wisdom,
Stopped in their play as she passed them And cried up from their cobbles :
Guarda I Ahi, guarda I ch' e be'a ! *
But three years after this
I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do
not know
For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes and thirty-four Catulli ;
And there had been a great catch of sardines, And his elders
Were packing them in the great wooden boxes For the market in Brescia, and he
Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish And getting in both of their ways ;
And in vain they commanded him to sta fermo ! And when they would not let him arrange
The fish in the boxes
He stroked those which were already arranged,
Murmuring for his own satisfaction This identical phrase :
Ch' e be'a.
And at this I was mildly abashed.
*
32
Bella.
? The Bellaires
Aus meinen grossen Schmerzen Mach' ich die kleinen Licder.
THE good Bellaires
Do not understand the conduct of this world's
affairs.
In fact they understood them so badly That they have had to cross the Channel.
Nine lawyers, four counsels, five judges and three proctors of the King,
Together with the respective wives, husbands, sisters and heterogeneous connections of the
good Bellaires,
Met to discuss their affairs ;
But the good Bellaires have so little understood
their affairs
That now there is no one at all
Who can understand any affair of theirs. Yet Fourteen hunters still eat in the stables of The good Squire Bellaire ;
But these may not suffer attainder,
33 D
? THE BELLAIRES
For they may not belong to the good Squire Bellaire
But to his wife.
On the contrary, if they do not belong to his wife,
He will plead
A " freedom from attainder "
For twelve horses and also for twelve boarhounds From Charles the Fourth ;
And a further freedom for the remainder
Of horses, from Henry the Fourth.
But the judges,
Being free of medieval scholarship, Will pay no attention to this,
And there will be only the more confusion, Replevin, estoppel, espavin and what not.
Nine lawyers, four counsels, etc. ,
Met to discuss their affairs,
But the sole result was bills
From lawyers to whom no one was indebted, And even the lawyers
Were uncertain who was supposed to be indebted to them.
Wherefore the good Squire Bellaire Resides now at Agde and Biaucaire.
To Carcassonne, Pui, and Alais He fareth from day to day, 34
? THE BELLAIRES
Or takes the sea air Between Marseilles And Beziers.
And for all this I have considerable regret, For the good Bellaires
Are very charming people.
The New Cake of Soap
Lo, how it gleams and glistens in the sun Like the cheek of a Chesterton.
35
? Salvationists
COME, my songs, let us speak of perfection We shall get ourselves rather disliked.
II
Ah yes, my songs, let us resurrect The very excellent term Rusticus.
Let us apply it in all its opprobrium To those to whom it applies.
And you may decline to make them immortal. For we shall consider them and their state
In delicate Opulent silence.
Ill
Come, my songs,
Let us take arms against this sea of stupidities-
Begining with Mumpodorus ;
And against this sea of vulgarities
Beginning with Nimmim ;
And against this sea of imbeciles
All the Bulmenian literati.
36
? Epitaph
LETJCIS, who intended a Grand Passion, Ends with a willingness-to-oblige.
Andes
THE bashful Arides
Has married an ugly wife,
He was bored with his manner of life,
Indifferent and discouraged he thought he might as
Well do this as anything else.
Saying within his heart, " I am no use to myself, " Let her, if she wants me, take me. "
He went to his doom.
37
? The Bath Tub
As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satis- factory lady.
? Amities
Old friends the most. w. B. y.
To one, on returning certain years after. You wore the same quite correct clothing,
You took no pleasure at all in my triumphs, You had the same old air of condescension
Mingled with a curious fear
That I, myself, might have enjoyed them.
Te voila, man Bourrienne, you also shall be immortal.
II
To another.
And we say good-bye to you also,
For you seem never to have discovered
That your relationship is wholly parasitic ; Yet to our feasts you bring neither
Wit, nor good spirits, nor the pleasing attitudes
Of discipleship.
39
? AMITIES
III
But you, bos amic, we keep on, Fortoyouweowearealdebt:
In spite of your obvious flaws,
You once discovered a moderate chop-house.
IV
Iste fuit vir incultus,
Deo laus, quod est sepultus, Vermes habent eius vultum
Ego autem jovialis Gaudero contubernalis
Cum jocunda femina.
40
A-a-a-a A-men.
? Meditatio
WHEN I carefully consider the curious habits of
dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
To Dives
WHO am I to condemn you,
I who am as much embittered
With poverty
As you are with useless riches ?
Dives,
? Ladies
Agathas.
FOUR and forty lovers had Agathas in the old
days,
All of whom she refused ;
And now she turns to me seeking love, And her hair also is turning.
Young Lady.
I have fed your lar with poppies,
I have adored you for three full years ;
And now you grumble because your dress does
not fit
And because I happen to say so.
Lesbia Ilia
Memnon, Memnon, that lady
Who used to walk about amongst us
With such gracious uncertainty, Is now wedded
To a British householder.
Lugete, VeneresI Lugete, CupidinesqueI 42
? LADIES
Passing
Flawless as Aphrodite, Thoroughly beautiful,
Brainless,
The faint odour of your patchouli,
Faint, almost, as the lines of cruelty about your chin,
Assails me, and concerns me almost as little.
43
? Phyllidula
PHYLLIDULA is scrawny but amorous, Thus have the gods awarded her
That in pleasure she receives more than she can
give,
If she does not count this blessed
Let her change her religion.
The Patterns
ERINNA is a model parent,
Her children have never discovered her adulteries,
Lalage is also a model parent, Her offspring are fat and happy.
Coda
O MY songs,
Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into
people's faces,
Will you find your lost dead among them ?
44
? The Seeing Eye
THE small dogs look at the big dogs ; They observe unwieldy dimensions And curious imperfections of odour.
Here is a formal male group :
The young men look upon their seniors, They consider the elderly mind
And observe its inexplicable correlations.
Said Tsin-Tsu :
It is only in small dogs and the young That we find minute observation.
45
? Ancora
GOOD God !
O canzonetti !
We who went out into the four A. M. of the world
Composing our albas,
We who shook oft our dew with the rabbits,
We who have seen even Artemis a-binding her
sandals,
Have we ever heard the like ? OmountainsofHellas! !
Gather about me, O Muses !
When we sat upon the granite brink in Helicon Clothed in the tattered sunlight,
O Muses with delicate shins,
O Muses with delectable knee-joints,
When we splashed and were splashed with
The lucid Castalian spray, Hadweeversuchanepithetcastuponus! !
They say you are risque,
? A TEANSLATION
FROM THE PROVENCAL OP EN BERTRANS DE BORN.
"Dompna pois de me no'us cal"
LADY, since you care nothing for me,
And since you have shut me away from you
Causelessly,
I know not where to go seeking,
For certainly
I will never again gather
Joy so rich, and if I find not ever
A lady with look so speaking
To my desire, worth yours whom I have lost, I'll have no other love at any cost.
And since I could not find a peer to you,
Neither one so fair, nor of such heart,
So eager and alert, Nor with such art
In attire, nor so gay
Nor with gift so bountiful and so true,
47
? "DOMPNA POIS DE ME NO'US CAL"
I will go out a-searching, Culling from each a fair trait
To make me a borrowed lady Till I again find you ready.
Bels Cembelins, I take of you your colour,
For it's your own, and your glance Where love is,
A proud thing I do here, For, as to colour and eyes
I shall have missed nothing at all,
Having yours.
I ask of Midons Aelis (of Montfort)
Her straight speech free-running,
That my phantom lack not in cunning.
At Chalais of the Viscountess, I would
That she give me outright Her two hands and her throat,
So take I my road To Rochechouart,
Swift-foot to my Lady Anhes,
Seeing that Tristan's lady Iseutz had never
Such grace of locks, I do ye to wit, Though she'd the far fame for it.
Of Audiart at Malemort, Though she with a full heart Wish me ill,
I'd have her form that's laced
48
? " DOMPNA POIS DE ME NO'US CAL "
So cunningly,
Without blemish, for her love
Breaks not nor turns aside. I of Miels-de-ben demand
Her straight fresh body,
She is so supple and young,
Her robes can but do her wrong.
Her white teeth, of the Lady Faidita I ask, and the fine courtesy
She hath to welcome one,
And such replies she lavishes
Within her nest ;
Of Bels Mirals, the rest, Tall stature and gaiety,
To make these avail
She knoweth well, betide
No change nor turning aside.
Ah, Bels Senher, Maent, at last
I ask naught from you,
Save that I have such hunger for
This phantom
As I've for you, such flame-lap, And yet I'd rather
Ask of you than hold another, Mayhap, right close and kissed.
Ah, lady, why have you cast
Me out, knowing you hold me so fast !
49 E
? The Coming of War: Actaeon
AN image of Lethe, and the fields
Full of faint light
but golden, Gray cliffs,
and beneath them
A sea
Harsher than granite,
unstill, never ceasing ; High forms
with the movement of gods, Perilous aspect ;
And one said : " This is Actaeon. "
Actaeon of golden greaves !
Over fair meadows,
Over the cool face of that field,
Unstill, ever moving, Hosts of an ancient people,
The silent cortege.
50
? After Ch'u Yuan
I WILL get me to the wood
Where the gods walk garlanded in wistaria, By the silver blue flood
move others with ivory cars. There come forth many maidens
to gather grapes for the leopards, my friend, For there are leopards drawing the cars.
I will walk in the glade,
I will come out of the new thicket
and accost the procession of maidens.
Liu Ch'e
THE rustling of the silk is discontinued, Dust drifts over the court-yard,
There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves Scurry into heaps and lie still,
And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them:
A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.
51 E2
? Fan-piece, for her Imperial Lord
FAN of white silk,
clear as frost on the grass-blade,
You also are laid aside.
Ts'ai Chi'h
THE petals fall in the fountain,
the orange-coloured rose-leaves, Their ochre clings to the stone.
52
? In a Station of the Metro
THE apparition of these faces in the crowd ; Petals on a wet, black bough.
Alba
As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley She lay beside me in the dawn.
Heather
THE black panther treads at my side,
And above my fingers
There float the petal-like flames.
The milk-white girls
Unbend from the holly-trees, And their snow-white leopard Watches to follow our trace.
53
? The Faun
HA ! sir, I have seen you sniffing and snoozling about
among my flowers. And what, pray, do you know about horticulture,
you capriped ?
"Come, Auster, come, Apeliota, And see the faun in our garden.
But if you move or speak This thing will run at you And scare itself to spasms. "
Coitus
THE gilded phaloi of the crocuses
are thrusting at the spring air. Here is there naught of dead gods
But a procession of festival,
A procession, Giulio Romano, Fit for your spirit to dwell in.
Dione, your nights are upon us.
The dew is upon the leaf.
The night about us is restless.
? The Encounter
ALL the while they were talking the new morality
Her eyes explored me. And when I arose to go
Her fingers were like the tissue Of a Japanese paper napkin.
Tempera
Io! lo! Tamuz!
The Dryad stands in my court-yard With plaintive, querulous crying.
Io!
Oh, no, she is not
(Tamuz.
Tamuz ! )
crying :
says, May my poems printed
She "
The god Pan is afraid to ask you, May my poems be printed this week ?
55
" Tamuz. "
be thisweek? "
? Black Slippers: Bellotti
AT the table beyond us
With her little suede slippers off,
With her white-stocking'd feet
Carefully kept from the floor by a napkin, She converses :
Connaissez-vous Ostende?
The gurgling Italian lady on the other side of the
restaurant
Replies with a certain hauteur,
But I await with patience
To see how Celestine will re-enter her slippers. She re-enters them with a groan.
Society
THE family position was waning,
And on this account the little Aurelia,
Who had laughed on eighteen summers, Now bears the palsied contact of Phidippus.
56
? Image
from D'Orleans
YOUNG men riding in the street In the bright new season
Spur without reason, Causing their steeds to leap.
And at the pace they keep Their horses' armoured feet
Strike sparks from the cobbled street In the bright new season.
Papyrus
Spring. . . Too long. . .
Gongula. . .
"lone, Dead the Long Year"
EMPTY are the ways,
Empty are the ways of this land And the flowers
Bend over with heavy heads. They bend in vain.
Empty are the ways of this land Where lone
Walked once, and now does not walk
But seems like a person just gone. 57
? THY soul
Grown delicate with satieties, Atthis.
I long for thy lips.
I long for thy narrow breasts, Thou restless, ungathered.
Atthis,
Shop Girl
FOR a moment she rested against me Like a swallow half blown to the wall, And they talk of Swinburne's women,
And the shepherdess meeting with Guido, And the harlots of Baudelaire.
58
? To Formianus' Young Lady Friend AFTER VALERIUS CATULLUS
ALL Hail ! young lady with a nose
by no means too small,
With a foot unbeautiful,
and with eyes that are not black,
With fingers that are not long, and with a mouth
undry,
And with a tongue by no means too elegant,
You are the friend of Formianus, the vendor of
cosmetics,
And they call you beautiful in the province, And you are even compared to Lesbia.
O most unfortunate age !
59
? Tame Cat
" IT rests me to be among beautiful women. Why should one always lie about such matters ?
I repeat :
It rests me to converse with beautiful women
Even though we talk nothing but nonsense,
The purring of the invisible antennae Is both stimulating and delightful. "
1910
GREEN arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries ! eyes.
60
L'Art,
Come, let us feast our
? Simulacra
WHY does the horse-faced lady of just the un- mentionable age
Walk down Longacre reciting Swinburne to herself,
inaudibly ?
Why does the small child in the soiled-white
imitation fur coat
Crawl in the very black gutter beneath the grape
stand ?
Why does the really handsome young woman
approach me in Sackville Street
Undeterred by the manifest age of my trappings ?
Women Before a Shop
THE gew-gaws of false amber and false turquoise attract them.
" Like to like yellows !
nature "
61
:
these
agglutinous
? Epilogue
O CHANSONS foregoing
You were a seven days' wonder,
When you came out in the magazines You created considerable stir in Chicago,
And now you are stale and worn out,
You're a very depleted fashion, A hoop-skirt, a calash,
An homely, transient antiquity.
Only emotion remains. Your emotions ?
Are those of a maitre-de-cafe.
62
? The Social Order
I
THIS government official,
Whose wife is several years his senior, Has such a caressing air
When he shakes hands with young ladies.
II (Pompes Funebres)
This old lady,
Who was "so old that she was an atheist,"
Is now surrounded
By six candles and a crucifix,
While the second wife of a nephew
Makes hay with the things in her house.
Her two cats
Go before her into Avernus ;
A sort of chloroformed suttee,
And it is to be hoped that their spirits will walk With their tails up,
And with a plaintive, gentle mewing,
For it is certain that she has left on this earth
No sound
Save a squabble of female connections.
63
? The Tea Shop
THE girl in the tea shop
is not so beautiful as she was,
The August has worn against her.
She does not get up the stairs so eagerly,
Yes, she also will turn middle-aged,
And the glow of youth that she spread about us
as she brought us our muffins Will be spread about us no longer.
She also will turn middle-aged,
64
? Epitaphs
Fu I
Fu I loved the high cloud and the hill, Alas, he died of alcohol
Li Po
And Li Po also died drunk. He tried to embrace a moon In the Yellow River.
Our Contemporaries
WHEN the Taihaitian princess
Heard that he had decided,
She rushed out into the sunlight and swarmed up
a cocoanut palm tree,
But he returned to this island
And wrote ninety Petrarchan sonnets.
NOTE. II s'agit d'un jeune poete qui a suivi le culte de
Gauguin jusqu'a Tahiti meme (et qui vit encore).
The Three Poets
66
The Game of Chess . . . ProvinciaDeserta . . .
CATHAY
Song of the Bowmen of
68 69
. . . . . . .
63 The City of Choan.
64 South Folk in Cold
95
Shu 75 The Beautiful Toilet. . TheBiverSong . . . The Biver Merchant's
112
To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers . . . 117
Homage to Quintus Septi-
Wife: ALetter . . 81 The Jewel Stairs'
Grievance . . . . Poem by the Bridge at
83
mius Florentis
tianus
Fish and the Shadow
Chris -
121 , 123
Ten-Shin 84
. .
66
.
CONTENTS
65 Country 96
. . . . Villanelle : The Psychologi-
103
NearPerigord
cal Hour
77 Dans un Omnibus de
78 Londres 115
.
88
? LUSTRA OF EZRA POUND
Tenzone
WILL people accept them ? (i. e. these songs).
As a timorous wench from a centaur (or a centurion),
Already they flee, howling in terror.
Will they be touched with the verisimilitudes ?
Their virgin stupidity is untemptable,
I beg you, my friendly critics,
Do not set about to procure me an audience.
I mate with my free kind upon the crags ; the hidden recesses
Have heard the echo of my heels, in the cool light,
in the darkness.
9
? The Condolence
A mis soledades voy>
De mis soledades vengo, Porque por andar conmigo Mi bastan mis pensamientos.
Lope de Vega. O MY fellow sufferers, songs of my youth,
A lot of asses because praise you
are " !
you We are " Red Bloods "
virile,"
We, you, I !
Imagine it, my fellow sufferers
Our maleness lifts us out of the ruck,
Who'd have foreseen it ?
O my fellow sufferers, we went out under the
trees,
We were in especial bored with male stupidity.
We went forth gathering delicate thoughts,
Our " " to serve us. fantastikon delighted
We were not exasperated with women, for the female is ductile.
And now you hear what is said to us : We are compared to that sort of person Who wanders about announcing his sex As if he had just discovered it.
Let us leave this matter, my songs,
and return to that which concerns us.
10
? The Garret
COME let us pity those who are better off than we are.
Come, my friend, and remember
that the rich have butlers and no friends,
And we have friends and no butlers.
Come let us pity the married and the unmarried.
Dawn enters with little feet
like a gilded Pavlova, And T am near my desire.
Nor has life in it aught better Than this hour of clear coolness,
the hour of waking together.
11
? The Garden
En robe de parade. Sainain.
LIKE a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anaemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the
very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like someone to speak to her, And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
12
? Ortus
How have I laboured ? How have I not laboured
To bring her soul to birth,
To give these elements a name and a centre !
She is beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid.
She has no name, and no place.
How have I laboured to bring her soul into
separation ;
To give her a name and her being !
Surely you are bound and entwined,
You are mingled with the elements unborn ; I have loved a stream and a shadow.
I beseech you enter your life.
I beseech
you
learn to " I " say
When I question you :
For you are no part, but a whole ;
No portion, but a being.
13
? Salutation
GENERATION of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable, 1 have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families, I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are, And they were happier than I am ; And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.
14
? Salutation the Second
You were praised, my books,
because I had just come from the country ;
I was twenty years behind the times so you found an audience ready.
I do not disown you,
do not you disown your progeny.
Here they stand without quaint devices,
Here they are with nothing archaic about them.
Watch the reporters spit,
Watch the anger of the professors, Watch how the pretty ladies revile them :
" Is
" the nonsense
this," they say,
that we expect of poets ?
"
"" Where is the vertigo of emotion ?
" No ! his first work was the best. "
" Poor Dear ! he has lost his illusions. "
15
"" Where is the Picturesque ?
? SALUTATION THE SECOND
Go, little naked and impudent songs, Go with a light foot !
(Or with two light feet, if it please you ! )
Go and dance shamelessly !
Go with an impertinent frolic !
Greet the grave and the stodgy,
Salute them with your thumbs at your noses.
Here are your bells and confetti.
Go ! rejuvenate things !
Rejuvenate even " The Spectator. " Go ! and make cat calls !
Dance and make people blush, Dance the dance of the phallus
and tell anecdotes of Cybele !
Speak of the indecorous conduct of the Gods !
(Tell it to Mr. Strachey. )
Ruffle the skirts of prudes,
speak of their knees and ankles.
But, above all, go to practical people go ! jangle their door-bells !
Say that you do no work
and that you will live forever.
16
? The Spring
CYDONIAN spring with her attendant train,
Maelids and water-girls,
Stepping beneath a boisterous wind from Thrace,
Throughout this sylvan place
Spreads the bright tips, And every vine-stock is
Clad in new brilliancies.
Falls like black lightning.
O bewildered heart,
Though every branch have back what last year
lost,
She, who moved here amid the cyclamen,
Moves only now a clinging tenuous ghost.
17
And wild desire
? Albatre
THIS lady in the white bath-robe which she calls
a peignoir
Is, for the time being, the mistress of my friend,
And the delicate white feet of her little white
dog
Are not more delicate than she is,
Nor would Gautier himself have despised their contrasts in whiteness
As she sits in the great chair Between the two indolent candles.
Causa
I JOIN these words for four people, Some others may overhear them,
O world, I am sorry for you,
You do not know these four people.
18
? Commission
Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied, Go also to the nerve-wracked, go to the enslaved-
by-convention,
Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors. Go as a great wave of cool water,
Bear my contempt of oppressors.
Speak against unconscious oppression,
Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.
Go to the bourgeoise who is dying of her ennuis, Go to the women in suburbs.
Go to the hideously wedded,
Go to them whose failure is concealed,
Go to the unluckily mated, Go to the bought wife,
Go to the woman entailed.
Go to those who have delicate lust,
Go to those whose delicate desires are thwarted.
19 c2
? COMMISSION
Go like a blight upon the dulness of the world ;
Go with your edge against this,
Strengthen the subtle cords,
Bring confidence upon the algae and the tentacles
of the soul.
Go in a friendly manner,
Go with an open speech.
Be eager to find new evils and new good,
Be against all forms of oppression.
Go to those who are thickened with middle age,
To those who have lost their interest.
Go to the adolescent who are smothered in
family
Oh how hideous it is
To see three generations of one house gathered
together !
It is like an old tree with shoots,
And with some branches rotted and falling.
Go out and defy opinion,
Go against this vegetable bondage of the blood. Be against all sorts of mortmain.
20
? A Pact
I MAKE a pact with you, Walt Whitman
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father ;
I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root
Let there be commerce between us.
21
? Surgit Fama
THERE is a truce among the gods, Kore is seen in the North
Skirting the blue-gray sea In gilded and russet mantle.
The corn has again its mother and she, Leuconoe, That failed never women,
Fails not the earth now.
The tricksome Hermes is here ; He moves behind me
Eager to catch my words,
Eager to spread them with rumour ;
To set upon them his change
Crafty and subtle ;
To alter them to his purpose ;
But do thou speak true, even to the letter :
" Once more in Delos, once more is the altar
a-quiver.
Once more is the chant heard.
Once more are the never abandoned gardens Full of gossip and old tales. "
22
? Preference
IT is true that you say the gods are more use to
you than fairies,
But for all that I have seen you
on a high, white, noble horse, Like some strange queen in a story.
It is odd that you should be covered with long robes
and trailing tendrils and flowers ;
It is odd that you should be changing your face
and resembling some other woman to
plague me ;
It is odd that you should be hiding yourself
In the cloud of beautiful women who do not concern me.
And I, who follow every seed-leaf upon the wind ? You will say that I deserve this.
23
? Dance Figure
For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee
DARK eyed,
woman of my dreams,
Ivory sandaled,
There is none like thee among the dancers, None with swift feet.
1 have not found thee in the tents,
In the broken darkness.
I have not found thee at the well-head
Among the women with pitchers.
Thine arms are as a young sapling under the
bark;
Thy face as a river with lights.
White as an almond are thy shoulders ; As new almonds stripped from the husk.
They guard thee not with eunuchs ; Not with bars of copper.
24
? DANCE FIGURE
Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest.
A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in patterns,
hast thou gathered about thee, O Nathat-Ikanaie, " Tree-at-the-river. "
As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me;
Thy fingers a frosted stream.
Thy maidens are white like pebbles ; Their music about thee !
There is none like thee among the dancers ; None with swift feet.
25
? April
Nympharum membra disjecta.
THREE spirits came to me And drew me apart
To where the olive boughs
Lay stripped upon the ground : Pale carnage beneath bright mist.
Gentildonna
SHE passed and left no quiver in the veins, who now
Moving among the trees, and clinging
in the air she severed,
Fanning the grass she walked on then, endures : Grey olive leaves beneath a rain-cold sky.
26
? The Rest
HELPLESS few in my country, remnant enslaved !
Artists broken against her, A-stray, lost in the villages, Mistrusted, spoken-against,
Lovers of beauty, starved, Thwarted with systems,
Helpless against the control ;
You who can not wear yourselves out By persisting to successes,
You who can only speak,
Who can not steel yourselves into reiteration ;
You of the finer sense,
Broken against false knowledge, You who can know at first hand,
Hated, shut in, mistrusted :
Take thought :
1 have weathered the storm,
I have beaten out my exile.
27
? Les Millwin
THE little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet. The mauve and greenish souls of the little
Millwins
Were seen lying along the upper seats Like so many unused boas.
The turbulent and undisciplined host of art students
The rigorous deputation from " Slade " Was before them.
With arms exalted, with fore-arms
Crossed in great futuristic X's, the art students
Exulted, they beheld the splendours of Cleopatra.
And the little Millwins beheld these things ;
With their large and anaemic eyes they looked
out upon this configuration.
Let us therefore mention the fact, For it seems to us worthy of record.
28
? Further Instructions
COME, my songs, let us express our baser passions, Let us express our envy of the man with a steady
job
and no worry about the future.
You are very idle, my songs.
I fear you will come to a bad end.
You stand about in the streets,
You loiter at the corners and bus-stops You do next to nothing at all.
You do not even express our inner nobilities, You will come to a very bad end.
And I?
I have gone half cracked,
I have talked to you so much that
I almost see you about me, Insolent little beasts, shameless, devoid of
clothing !
But you, newest song of the lot,
You are not old enough to have done much
mischief,
I will get you a green coat out of China
With dragons worked upon it,
I will get you the scarlet silk trousers
From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa
Maria Novella,
Lest they say we are lacking in taste, Or that there is no caste in this family.
29
? A Song of the Degrees
REST me with Chinese colours, For I think the glass is evil.
II
The wind moves above the wheat With a silver crashing,
A thin war of metal.
I have known the golden disc,
I have seen it melting above me.
I have known the stone-bright place, The hall of clear colours.
Ill
O glass subtly evil, confusion of colours !
O light bound and bent in, soul of the captive, WhyamIwarned? WhyamIsentaway? Why is your glitter full of curious mistrust ?
O glass subtle and cunning, O powdery gold !
O filaments of amber, two-faced iridescence !
30
? Ite
Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young and from the intolerant,
Move among the lovers of perfection alone. Seek ever to stand in the hard Sophoclean light And take your wounds from it gladly.
Dum Capitolium ScanJet
How many will come after me
singing as well as I sing, none better ;
Telling the heart of their truth
as I have taught them to tell it ;
Fruit of my seed,
my unnameable children.
Know then that I loved you from afore-time, Clear speakers, naked in the sun, untrammelled,
To KaXoV
EVEN in my dreams you have denied yourself to me
And sent me only your handmaids. 31
? The Study in Aesthetics
THE very small children in patched clothing, Being smitten with an unusual wisdom,
Stopped in their play as she passed them And cried up from their cobbles :
Guarda I Ahi, guarda I ch' e be'a ! *
But three years after this
I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do
not know
For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes and thirty-four Catulli ;
And there had been a great catch of sardines, And his elders
Were packing them in the great wooden boxes For the market in Brescia, and he
Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish And getting in both of their ways ;
And in vain they commanded him to sta fermo ! And when they would not let him arrange
The fish in the boxes
He stroked those which were already arranged,
Murmuring for his own satisfaction This identical phrase :
Ch' e be'a.
And at this I was mildly abashed.
*
32
Bella.
? The Bellaires
Aus meinen grossen Schmerzen Mach' ich die kleinen Licder.
THE good Bellaires
Do not understand the conduct of this world's
affairs.
In fact they understood them so badly That they have had to cross the Channel.
Nine lawyers, four counsels, five judges and three proctors of the King,
Together with the respective wives, husbands, sisters and heterogeneous connections of the
good Bellaires,
Met to discuss their affairs ;
But the good Bellaires have so little understood
their affairs
That now there is no one at all
Who can understand any affair of theirs. Yet Fourteen hunters still eat in the stables of The good Squire Bellaire ;
But these may not suffer attainder,
33 D
? THE BELLAIRES
For they may not belong to the good Squire Bellaire
But to his wife.
On the contrary, if they do not belong to his wife,
He will plead
A " freedom from attainder "
For twelve horses and also for twelve boarhounds From Charles the Fourth ;
And a further freedom for the remainder
Of horses, from Henry the Fourth.
But the judges,
Being free of medieval scholarship, Will pay no attention to this,
And there will be only the more confusion, Replevin, estoppel, espavin and what not.
Nine lawyers, four counsels, etc. ,
Met to discuss their affairs,
But the sole result was bills
From lawyers to whom no one was indebted, And even the lawyers
Were uncertain who was supposed to be indebted to them.
Wherefore the good Squire Bellaire Resides now at Agde and Biaucaire.
To Carcassonne, Pui, and Alais He fareth from day to day, 34
? THE BELLAIRES
Or takes the sea air Between Marseilles And Beziers.
And for all this I have considerable regret, For the good Bellaires
Are very charming people.
The New Cake of Soap
Lo, how it gleams and glistens in the sun Like the cheek of a Chesterton.
35
? Salvationists
COME, my songs, let us speak of perfection We shall get ourselves rather disliked.
II
Ah yes, my songs, let us resurrect The very excellent term Rusticus.
Let us apply it in all its opprobrium To those to whom it applies.
And you may decline to make them immortal. For we shall consider them and their state
In delicate Opulent silence.
Ill
Come, my songs,
Let us take arms against this sea of stupidities-
Begining with Mumpodorus ;
And against this sea of vulgarities
Beginning with Nimmim ;
And against this sea of imbeciles
All the Bulmenian literati.
36
? Epitaph
LETJCIS, who intended a Grand Passion, Ends with a willingness-to-oblige.
Andes
THE bashful Arides
Has married an ugly wife,
He was bored with his manner of life,
Indifferent and discouraged he thought he might as
Well do this as anything else.
Saying within his heart, " I am no use to myself, " Let her, if she wants me, take me. "
He went to his doom.
37
? The Bath Tub
As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satis- factory lady.
? Amities
Old friends the most. w. B. y.
To one, on returning certain years after. You wore the same quite correct clothing,
You took no pleasure at all in my triumphs, You had the same old air of condescension
Mingled with a curious fear
That I, myself, might have enjoyed them.
Te voila, man Bourrienne, you also shall be immortal.
II
To another.
And we say good-bye to you also,
For you seem never to have discovered
That your relationship is wholly parasitic ; Yet to our feasts you bring neither
Wit, nor good spirits, nor the pleasing attitudes
Of discipleship.
39
? AMITIES
III
But you, bos amic, we keep on, Fortoyouweowearealdebt:
In spite of your obvious flaws,
You once discovered a moderate chop-house.
IV
Iste fuit vir incultus,
Deo laus, quod est sepultus, Vermes habent eius vultum
Ego autem jovialis Gaudero contubernalis
Cum jocunda femina.
40
A-a-a-a A-men.
? Meditatio
WHEN I carefully consider the curious habits of
dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
To Dives
WHO am I to condemn you,
I who am as much embittered
With poverty
As you are with useless riches ?
Dives,
? Ladies
Agathas.
FOUR and forty lovers had Agathas in the old
days,
All of whom she refused ;
And now she turns to me seeking love, And her hair also is turning.
Young Lady.
I have fed your lar with poppies,
I have adored you for three full years ;
And now you grumble because your dress does
not fit
And because I happen to say so.
Lesbia Ilia
Memnon, Memnon, that lady
Who used to walk about amongst us
With such gracious uncertainty, Is now wedded
To a British householder.
Lugete, VeneresI Lugete, CupidinesqueI 42
? LADIES
Passing
Flawless as Aphrodite, Thoroughly beautiful,
Brainless,
The faint odour of your patchouli,
Faint, almost, as the lines of cruelty about your chin,
Assails me, and concerns me almost as little.
43
? Phyllidula
PHYLLIDULA is scrawny but amorous, Thus have the gods awarded her
That in pleasure she receives more than she can
give,
If she does not count this blessed
Let her change her religion.
The Patterns
ERINNA is a model parent,
Her children have never discovered her adulteries,
Lalage is also a model parent, Her offspring are fat and happy.
Coda
O MY songs,
Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into
people's faces,
Will you find your lost dead among them ?
44
? The Seeing Eye
THE small dogs look at the big dogs ; They observe unwieldy dimensions And curious imperfections of odour.
Here is a formal male group :
The young men look upon their seniors, They consider the elderly mind
And observe its inexplicable correlations.
Said Tsin-Tsu :
It is only in small dogs and the young That we find minute observation.
45
? Ancora
GOOD God !
O canzonetti !
We who went out into the four A. M. of the world
Composing our albas,
We who shook oft our dew with the rabbits,
We who have seen even Artemis a-binding her
sandals,
Have we ever heard the like ? OmountainsofHellas! !
Gather about me, O Muses !
When we sat upon the granite brink in Helicon Clothed in the tattered sunlight,
O Muses with delicate shins,
O Muses with delectable knee-joints,
When we splashed and were splashed with
The lucid Castalian spray, Hadweeversuchanepithetcastuponus! !
They say you are risque,
? A TEANSLATION
FROM THE PROVENCAL OP EN BERTRANS DE BORN.
"Dompna pois de me no'us cal"
LADY, since you care nothing for me,
And since you have shut me away from you
Causelessly,
I know not where to go seeking,
For certainly
I will never again gather
Joy so rich, and if I find not ever
A lady with look so speaking
To my desire, worth yours whom I have lost, I'll have no other love at any cost.
And since I could not find a peer to you,
Neither one so fair, nor of such heart,
So eager and alert, Nor with such art
In attire, nor so gay
Nor with gift so bountiful and so true,
47
? "DOMPNA POIS DE ME NO'US CAL"
I will go out a-searching, Culling from each a fair trait
To make me a borrowed lady Till I again find you ready.
Bels Cembelins, I take of you your colour,
For it's your own, and your glance Where love is,
A proud thing I do here, For, as to colour and eyes
I shall have missed nothing at all,
Having yours.
I ask of Midons Aelis (of Montfort)
Her straight speech free-running,
That my phantom lack not in cunning.
At Chalais of the Viscountess, I would
That she give me outright Her two hands and her throat,
So take I my road To Rochechouart,
Swift-foot to my Lady Anhes,
Seeing that Tristan's lady Iseutz had never
Such grace of locks, I do ye to wit, Though she'd the far fame for it.
Of Audiart at Malemort, Though she with a full heart Wish me ill,
I'd have her form that's laced
48
? " DOMPNA POIS DE ME NO'US CAL "
So cunningly,
Without blemish, for her love
Breaks not nor turns aside. I of Miels-de-ben demand
Her straight fresh body,
She is so supple and young,
Her robes can but do her wrong.
Her white teeth, of the Lady Faidita I ask, and the fine courtesy
She hath to welcome one,
And such replies she lavishes
Within her nest ;
Of Bels Mirals, the rest, Tall stature and gaiety,
To make these avail
She knoweth well, betide
No change nor turning aside.
Ah, Bels Senher, Maent, at last
I ask naught from you,
Save that I have such hunger for
This phantom
As I've for you, such flame-lap, And yet I'd rather
Ask of you than hold another, Mayhap, right close and kissed.
Ah, lady, why have you cast
Me out, knowing you hold me so fast !
49 E
? The Coming of War: Actaeon
AN image of Lethe, and the fields
Full of faint light
but golden, Gray cliffs,
and beneath them
A sea
Harsher than granite,
unstill, never ceasing ; High forms
with the movement of gods, Perilous aspect ;
And one said : " This is Actaeon. "
Actaeon of golden greaves !
Over fair meadows,
Over the cool face of that field,
Unstill, ever moving, Hosts of an ancient people,
The silent cortege.
50
? After Ch'u Yuan
I WILL get me to the wood
Where the gods walk garlanded in wistaria, By the silver blue flood
move others with ivory cars. There come forth many maidens
to gather grapes for the leopards, my friend, For there are leopards drawing the cars.
I will walk in the glade,
I will come out of the new thicket
and accost the procession of maidens.
Liu Ch'e
THE rustling of the silk is discontinued, Dust drifts over the court-yard,
There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves Scurry into heaps and lie still,
And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them:
A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.
51 E2
? Fan-piece, for her Imperial Lord
FAN of white silk,
clear as frost on the grass-blade,
You also are laid aside.
Ts'ai Chi'h
THE petals fall in the fountain,
the orange-coloured rose-leaves, Their ochre clings to the stone.
52
? In a Station of the Metro
THE apparition of these faces in the crowd ; Petals on a wet, black bough.
Alba
As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley She lay beside me in the dawn.
Heather
THE black panther treads at my side,
And above my fingers
There float the petal-like flames.
The milk-white girls
Unbend from the holly-trees, And their snow-white leopard Watches to follow our trace.
53
? The Faun
HA ! sir, I have seen you sniffing and snoozling about
among my flowers. And what, pray, do you know about horticulture,
you capriped ?
"Come, Auster, come, Apeliota, And see the faun in our garden.
But if you move or speak This thing will run at you And scare itself to spasms. "
Coitus
THE gilded phaloi of the crocuses
are thrusting at the spring air. Here is there naught of dead gods
But a procession of festival,
A procession, Giulio Romano, Fit for your spirit to dwell in.
Dione, your nights are upon us.
The dew is upon the leaf.
The night about us is restless.
? The Encounter
ALL the while they were talking the new morality
Her eyes explored me. And when I arose to go
Her fingers were like the tissue Of a Japanese paper napkin.
Tempera
Io! lo! Tamuz!
The Dryad stands in my court-yard With plaintive, querulous crying.
Io!
Oh, no, she is not
(Tamuz.
Tamuz ! )
crying :
says, May my poems printed
She "
The god Pan is afraid to ask you, May my poems be printed this week ?
55
" Tamuz. "
be thisweek? "
? Black Slippers: Bellotti
AT the table beyond us
With her little suede slippers off,
With her white-stocking'd feet
Carefully kept from the floor by a napkin, She converses :
Connaissez-vous Ostende?
The gurgling Italian lady on the other side of the
restaurant
Replies with a certain hauteur,
But I await with patience
To see how Celestine will re-enter her slippers. She re-enters them with a groan.
Society
THE family position was waning,
And on this account the little Aurelia,
Who had laughed on eighteen summers, Now bears the palsied contact of Phidippus.
56
? Image
from D'Orleans
YOUNG men riding in the street In the bright new season
Spur without reason, Causing their steeds to leap.
And at the pace they keep Their horses' armoured feet
Strike sparks from the cobbled street In the bright new season.
Papyrus
Spring. . . Too long. . .
Gongula. . .
"lone, Dead the Long Year"
EMPTY are the ways,
Empty are the ways of this land And the flowers
Bend over with heavy heads. They bend in vain.
Empty are the ways of this land Where lone
Walked once, and now does not walk
But seems like a person just gone. 57
? THY soul
Grown delicate with satieties, Atthis.
I long for thy lips.
I long for thy narrow breasts, Thou restless, ungathered.
Atthis,
Shop Girl
FOR a moment she rested against me Like a swallow half blown to the wall, And they talk of Swinburne's women,
And the shepherdess meeting with Guido, And the harlots of Baudelaire.
58
? To Formianus' Young Lady Friend AFTER VALERIUS CATULLUS
ALL Hail ! young lady with a nose
by no means too small,
With a foot unbeautiful,
and with eyes that are not black,
With fingers that are not long, and with a mouth
undry,
And with a tongue by no means too elegant,
You are the friend of Formianus, the vendor of
cosmetics,
And they call you beautiful in the province, And you are even compared to Lesbia.
O most unfortunate age !
59
? Tame Cat
" IT rests me to be among beautiful women. Why should one always lie about such matters ?
I repeat :
It rests me to converse with beautiful women
Even though we talk nothing but nonsense,
The purring of the invisible antennae Is both stimulating and delightful. "
1910
GREEN arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries ! eyes.
60
L'Art,
Come, let us feast our
? Simulacra
WHY does the horse-faced lady of just the un- mentionable age
Walk down Longacre reciting Swinburne to herself,
inaudibly ?
Why does the small child in the soiled-white
imitation fur coat
Crawl in the very black gutter beneath the grape
stand ?
Why does the really handsome young woman
approach me in Sackville Street
Undeterred by the manifest age of my trappings ?
Women Before a Shop
THE gew-gaws of false amber and false turquoise attract them.
" Like to like yellows !
nature "
61
:
these
agglutinous
? Epilogue
O CHANSONS foregoing
You were a seven days' wonder,
When you came out in the magazines You created considerable stir in Chicago,
And now you are stale and worn out,
You're a very depleted fashion, A hoop-skirt, a calash,
An homely, transient antiquity.
Only emotion remains. Your emotions ?
Are those of a maitre-de-cafe.
62
? The Social Order
I
THIS government official,
Whose wife is several years his senior, Has such a caressing air
When he shakes hands with young ladies.
II (Pompes Funebres)
This old lady,
Who was "so old that she was an atheist,"
Is now surrounded
By six candles and a crucifix,
While the second wife of a nephew
Makes hay with the things in her house.
Her two cats
Go before her into Avernus ;
A sort of chloroformed suttee,
And it is to be hoped that their spirits will walk With their tails up,
And with a plaintive, gentle mewing,
For it is certain that she has left on this earth
No sound
Save a squabble of female connections.
63
? The Tea Shop
THE girl in the tea shop
is not so beautiful as she was,
The August has worn against her.
She does not get up the stairs so eagerly,
Yes, she also will turn middle-aged,
And the glow of youth that she spread about us
as she brought us our muffins Will be spread about us no longer.
She also will turn middle-aged,
64
? Epitaphs
Fu I
Fu I loved the high cloud and the hill, Alas, he died of alcohol
Li Po
And Li Po also died drunk. He tried to embrace a moon In the Yellow River.
Our Contemporaries
WHEN the Taihaitian princess
Heard that he had decided,
She rushed out into the sunlight and swarmed up
a cocoanut palm tree,
But he returned to this island
And wrote ninety Petrarchan sonnets.
NOTE. II s'agit d'un jeune poete qui a suivi le culte de
Gauguin jusqu'a Tahiti meme (et qui vit encore).
